Far Away, So Close

We survived our trip to foreign exotic New Jersey, and while I know that sounds typically melodramatic of me, let me just say this: JUGHANDLES. OK? To get to our hotel we needed to make a U-turn on Rt. 73, and it was everything in the world except pretty.

This is your typical, obligatory "Shae in the hotel room" picture. She's watching "Madagascar 2." We watched a lot of TV on Friday night, because she pretty much refused to go to sleep until the Olympics opening ceremonies were over. She saw everything but the cauldron lighting. Her favorite part, and mine, was the Joni Mitchell number with the flying boy.

When you finally get inside CoCo Key -- you have to kind of run a Habitrail from your hotel room through the entire first floor of the hotel (which is what we did) or you can get a day pass and come in the front door -- you're can be overwhelmed by how much stuff is there. (I was.) It's two stories, with a giant interactive water play structure right in the middle, filling almost the entire main floor.

Upstairs is a smaller swim-in theater, which is basically a pirate ship inside a wading pool, with fountains and bouncy water swings for babies and a couple of small slides. The sail of the ship is a screen where they show cartoons for the kids. (SpongeBob SquarePants, of course.)

And here is my kid, the crazy rebel, going down a waterslide feet first, on her stomach. After the lifeguards were repeatedly telling other kids not to do this very thing. We had to bench her after this for a little while, so Mommy didn't have a stroke. (By the way -- not a whole lot of picture of her from this trip, because I was unavailable for pictures due to actually participating. I KNOW!)

There isn't really much to say about it -- we only stayed for a few hours, because we were all tired and cranky from being up late the night before, not sleeping well in a strange bed, and we were at the water park on a Saturday after a solid week of snow, so it was pretty crowded -- but we had a nice time. It was definitely nice to get out of the house, inhale some chlorine, put our bathing suits on, get our feet wet.

I'll write some more tomorrow (because I didn't take ONE SINGLE PICTURE yesterday, so I need to stretch this out, haha) but the short version of the story is: it doesn't beat going to the actual beach, but if it's the middle of February and you've been stuck inside and you want to do something fun, I can recommend CoCo Key if there is one near you. Don't tell Shae you're going though because she'll stow away in your suitcase.